After games were finished we all loaded back on the bus and headed back to the hotel. On the way back we stopped at Taco Bell and ate quickly. When we got back to the hotel, I ran upstairs and grabbed my copy of the reading that Taylor and I were doing at closing ceremonies, then ran back downstairs to do a sound check. Taylor and I ran through it once. Then I ran back upstairs and jumped in the shower. After finishing the shower, getting dressed, doing a quick redo of my makeup and putting some mousse in my hair so it would look somewhat decent despite being wet, Rebecca and I went downstairs for the platinum round of Bible quiz. I though they already started when we got down there, so I was very surprised to hear a girl going "Wait, don't tell me, I know this!" All I'm thinking is "What the heck? What kind of attitude problem does this girl have?" Then she proceeds "Jesus, God, the Bible, and Moses". Then it dawns on me "Oh, this must only be the practice question!" Sure enough it was. It went on to the second person. The full question said since we just celebrated Art's 90th birthday (or something like that...), how many years has Art been married to his wife? The second person stands up and says "90 years". It was funny. The real answer was 67. Wow. During platinum round I kept thinking how my team would have fit in there so easily...but it's okay. Every time someone answered a question I was answering the question right along with them in my head...and whenever someone got something wrong I got so frustrated, I couldn't stop thinking you should know this! The worst was when one person got up, said the distinctives of Paul's message PERFECTLY, then said that was not his answer and started over! I was so frustrated for that person (I didn't realize until later that it was Ricki's church, Taylor Creek). Arielle had to remind me not to make faces and physically react, lest the competitors notice from up on stage. But overall I felt platinum round was good, the points seemed to be evenly spread out, not one or two teams dominating every question.
After platinum round, they announced the winners of the fine arts categories. As they were going through the different categories I noticed that one of the big cardboard checks had something written on the back. I strained to see what it said, and although I couldn't make it out clearly I was pretty sure it said "Adam Hardy". I poked Jonathan (or was it Ben?) in the side and asked if he thought that's what it said, and he confirmed that yes, he too was pretty sure it said Adam Hardy. That made me happy, I had hoped that if I didn't win public speaking, that Adam would win. He's a really, really good speaker (not to mention a very good friend!). Then they get to public speaking, and they announce that there are two winners (I'm pretty sure one is the teens/adult category and the other is the children's category). The guy announcing said "The first one is from Texas..." (In my mind: "Yep, Adam Hardy") "From Grace Covenant Church..." ("Wait, what the...") "...Shaney Lee!" OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WAS SOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!! And surprised, too! Brian asked me later why I was surprised, "We all knew you won." Well, I didn't. I thought Adam had won. But it turns out the he got second in the teens/adult category, right behind me. The other girl who won the children's category was a girl named Nicole from Colorado. The winner of the piano competition was Matthew Swift, the guy who played piano during citation ceremony and is going to Baylor. Other than that, I don't remember who won what.
After they announced the fine arts winners, there was a break before closing ceremonies, so I took the laptop to the lobby to do the online check-in for my family's fight the next day. After doing that, Jonathan came up to me and asked me to check the results from speech and debate regionals so he could see if he and Ben would get a debate at-large slot to nationals. They didn't, unfortunately. But I DID see that Charity and Toni qualified in LD! I was sooooo happy! Then I went back upstairs for closing ceremonies. Mrs. Bickham caught me outside the door and said "Adam says congratulations." "Oh, you called him and told him already?" I asked. "Well, he got second, and I called to tell him that," she replied. I was very happy for Adam! She then proceeded to say that after being told that he got second, Adam asked "So who got first?" When Mrs. Bickham answered "Shaney", Adam's reaction was "Oh, that is so stinkin' awesome!" Hahaha...classic Adam Hardy.
Then closing ceremonies started. I went to the back of the room, got my mic, then headed up onstage as the highlight video was playing. After the highlight video finished, Taylor and I did our reading. My voice was starting to give out from all the screaming I had done that day, but as I was reading all I was thinking was "You just won public speaking, you have to do this well!" I used much vocal variety and inflection as I possibly could. Later, my mom told me "I never realized your voice was so smooth and pleasant to listen to!" Well, it's not normally, I just made sure to use my voice well during the reading! :P After I got offstage was worship. It was AMAZING!!!! WOW!!!! There was also a guy who did "sand art" which was really cool. I honestly don't remember much about closing ceremonies beyond that-but I do know that God was there. At the end, they showed the video announcing next year's Summit location-Greensborough, North Carolina!
After closing ceremonies, Altobelli called one last team meeting to share our highs and lows of Summit. I don't remember exactly everything I said, I remember saying that kissing Art Rorheim was a high, and that one low was that Summit was OVER!!! We also revealed our "secret prayer partners". Rachel Wohl had been praying for me, and I had been praying for Altobelli.
After our team meeting I got to talk with Ricki a bit and met "Mr. Blue Shirt". Then we went out to dinner at the American Cafe.
As I was getting ready for bed that night, we heard a knock on our door. I opened it, and Altobelli was standing there WITH MY BAG THAT HAD BEEN MISSING SINCE FRIDAY NIGHT!!!!! I was SOOOOOOOO ecstatic to have it back!!! I asked him "Where was it?" "Probably where you left it". "But I didn't leave it anywhere! WHERE WAS IT?" "Downstairs in the ballroom. Kevin White found it as they were cleaning up and called the last number dialed, which happened to be mine."
So I finally had my money, cell phone, Bible, etc. back!!!
At midnight, after we were already asleep, Paul Hastings called to see how things were going. I stayed up for about a half hour or so talking to him and Christina. When I mentioned that no one else was still up, Paul's reaction was "What kind of Summit is that???" But he understood when I explained that our bus left at 6:30 am the next morning.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
SUMMIT-Sunday-Games!
Sunday morning I wake up, thanks to staying up late the night before talking to Arielle I am pretty exhausted...but I force myself to get out of bed and get ready to go. We stop by Einstein's Bagels before loading on the bus and driving to the University of Northern Florida. When we get there and get on the circle, Marcelo reads the real final roster of who's doing what event. I am in four events the first round, and two every round after that. I wasn't happy that I was taken out of both team basketball and balloon, but it's what I was expecting after talking with Arielle the night before, so I was okay with it. Plus, it was a huge improvement over what I though I had been assigned the day before.
So round one. We get second on the circle, losing to Team New England #2. This was mostly due to the fact that we pretty much only practiced playoff events, so our other events were a little weak. But oh well. I'm still happy with the first round, because ROSE AND I WON THE THREE-LEGGED RACE!!!! Oh my goodness you have NO idea how happy that makes me!!!! Three-legged race has always been my favorite event since T&T, and to win my favorite event at Summit, the last time I would ever compete in that event, was simply the coolest thing ever!!!!! Girl's tug wasn't that great. I don't know what it is but TNE for some reason is really good at tug...even though they don't always have the biggest girls and there form doesn't look all that great. We actually had to restart tug because TNE started tugging before they blew the horn, only Rebecca didn't realize that TNE had false started so she started pulling...everybody on our line is yelling at Rebecca to stop pulling but she doesn't hear them, so I had to turn around and get in Rebecca's face and tell her to stop pulling! So yeah, we restarted, and TNE won, though we put up a fight and held them off for a little bit. Also, I'm pretty sure it was the first round that Ben got his funny handoff.
So they were running the sprint relay. Rachel ran her two laps and caught up to the girl in front of her. Ben sees Rachel coming around, so he starts to take off. The girl on the OTHER team speeds up, gets a couple steps ahead of Rachel, and puts her baton in Ben's hand! Rachel had no clue what to do, Ben took a couple of steps before realizing he had the wrong baton in his hand and stopped, having no clue what to do, and the guy on the other team stood there looking baffled, having no clue what to do! All of us on the line were laughing so hard...IT WAS SO HILARIOUS!!!!! The best part is that Daniel caught it on tape!!! Oh my gosh it was SO FUNNY!!!!
So yeah, first round we get second on our circle. We go on to round two where we get first. Tug was a lot of fun that round, it was REALLY close. I actually thought that the other team had won and was upset when they blew the whistle. Then I hear my team screaming and cheering behind us...so I turn around and Rebecca has the beanbag, and it hits me that WE WON!!! Haha I was so excited!!!
We go outside to eat lunch. But let's back up a little bit. To Summit 2006 in Chicago, actually. Marcelo saw a cute girl on his circle, and Brian told him that when he won the marathon race he should go up to her and say "That was for you!" Problem is, he DQs when he knocks down the first pin. So yeah, he doesn't get to do it, but he goes up to the girl afterwards (I think...Marcelo can correct me if I'm wrong) and tells her what he had been planning to do. Fast forward to 2008. In our first round, there had been a girl named Tana on a different flight on our circle. She was cute and fast, breaking both the agility and sprint race records. Marcelo went up to her after his agility (?) and told her "That was for you". So during the lunch break, Marcelo sees the girl from 2006 with Tana's church. Marcelo is weirded out and tells Brian that the two girls are from the same church. Brian goes over to talk to the girls, runs back to get Marcelo, drags him over to the girls, and announces to Marcelo, "They're sisters, you idiot!" I laughed SO HARD when I heard about that!!! Out of all the possible girls at Summit...from two different years! What a coincidence...
Anyways, we go back into the gym. We win round three. Nothing particularly special that I remember.
Round 4, we're on the circle where Taylor's timing. Apparently we were 1 second off the marathon medley record and could have broken it if Brian had run faster and not decided to try and conserve energy. We win round 4 as well.
So rounds 1-4 were beautiful. Round 5, not so much. We started out DQing sprint race, and had at least one more DQ (on balloon I think...). Still, we put up a REALLY good fight, missing first place on our circle and going on to gold round by two points. But it's alright, because we did better than I was expecting (I expected to get to bronze round, round 4, and then drop out). This is MUCH farther than any other team in Grace Covenant history has ever gone. Unfortunately, when the round was over we weren't thinking that, because the line judges DQed us on boy's tug even though we thought they were wrong...so Everett challenged it but the line judge's wouldn't change. Had we not been DQed in that event we would have gone on. So we're all slipping into a bad mood, when the circle director comes up to us and says that DQing all three teams was the best they could possibly do based on what they saw. He then went on to say he needed prayer because his wife had died twelve weeks beforehand! I felt SO guilty when he said that, but I was also amazed that he was even there! We all put our hands on him, and Everett prayed...in that moment, I felt overwhelmed by what God was showing me. How could I possibly be complaining about a silver round finish, when others were going through such difficult circumstances? I felt so many emotions in that moment...grief for the circle director, awe at the Christian fellowship, joy for God's obvious hand on our team that day, happiness at our finish, anger at myself for getting angry at the line judges, sadness that I was done, my last year of Summit EVER was over...I started bawling. No joke. I was overwhelmed by everything. And I wasn't the only one crying, I saw several other girls crying. Then the hugs started going around...there was a sense of finalty in those moments that I really can't describe. That was it. MY YEARS OF SUMMIT COMPETITION WERE OVER. And I didn't know what to do in that moment. So I just clung to my teammates. Hugs must be God's way of giving His comfort in a tangible way. I was incredibly overwhelmed in that moment, but if I was hugging a teammate, everything was okay.
Finally we watched the gold round. The team we lost to got second, team new england #1 got first. I FINALLY GOT TO MEET NEWENGLANDITE08 FROM THE AWANA FORUMS!!!!! I've been meaning to meet him at Summit for the past three years. No joke. Ever since Chicago year. And I FINALLY got to!!
Games were amazing. Even after getting pulled out of several of the events I wanted to do I still had an amazing time. God was so evident that day. And, believe it or not, that day I fell in love with the one event I've always hated the most. That's right. I fell in love with tug. Too bad I fell in love with it the LAST TIME I would ever compete in it!!!! Urgh...
So round one. We get second on the circle, losing to Team New England #2. This was mostly due to the fact that we pretty much only practiced playoff events, so our other events were a little weak. But oh well. I'm still happy with the first round, because ROSE AND I WON THE THREE-LEGGED RACE!!!! Oh my goodness you have NO idea how happy that makes me!!!! Three-legged race has always been my favorite event since T&T, and to win my favorite event at Summit, the last time I would ever compete in that event, was simply the coolest thing ever!!!!! Girl's tug wasn't that great. I don't know what it is but TNE for some reason is really good at tug...even though they don't always have the biggest girls and there form doesn't look all that great. We actually had to restart tug because TNE started tugging before they blew the horn, only Rebecca didn't realize that TNE had false started so she started pulling...everybody on our line is yelling at Rebecca to stop pulling but she doesn't hear them, so I had to turn around and get in Rebecca's face and tell her to stop pulling! So yeah, we restarted, and TNE won, though we put up a fight and held them off for a little bit. Also, I'm pretty sure it was the first round that Ben got his funny handoff.
So they were running the sprint relay. Rachel ran her two laps and caught up to the girl in front of her. Ben sees Rachel coming around, so he starts to take off. The girl on the OTHER team speeds up, gets a couple steps ahead of Rachel, and puts her baton in Ben's hand! Rachel had no clue what to do, Ben took a couple of steps before realizing he had the wrong baton in his hand and stopped, having no clue what to do, and the guy on the other team stood there looking baffled, having no clue what to do! All of us on the line were laughing so hard...IT WAS SO HILARIOUS!!!!! The best part is that Daniel caught it on tape!!! Oh my gosh it was SO FUNNY!!!!
So yeah, first round we get second on our circle. We go on to round two where we get first. Tug was a lot of fun that round, it was REALLY close. I actually thought that the other team had won and was upset when they blew the whistle. Then I hear my team screaming and cheering behind us...so I turn around and Rebecca has the beanbag, and it hits me that WE WON!!! Haha I was so excited!!!
We go outside to eat lunch. But let's back up a little bit. To Summit 2006 in Chicago, actually. Marcelo saw a cute girl on his circle, and Brian told him that when he won the marathon race he should go up to her and say "That was for you!" Problem is, he DQs when he knocks down the first pin. So yeah, he doesn't get to do it, but he goes up to the girl afterwards (I think...Marcelo can correct me if I'm wrong) and tells her what he had been planning to do. Fast forward to 2008. In our first round, there had been a girl named Tana on a different flight on our circle. She was cute and fast, breaking both the agility and sprint race records. Marcelo went up to her after his agility (?) and told her "That was for you". So during the lunch break, Marcelo sees the girl from 2006 with Tana's church. Marcelo is weirded out and tells Brian that the two girls are from the same church. Brian goes over to talk to the girls, runs back to get Marcelo, drags him over to the girls, and announces to Marcelo, "They're sisters, you idiot!" I laughed SO HARD when I heard about that!!! Out of all the possible girls at Summit...from two different years! What a coincidence...
Anyways, we go back into the gym. We win round three. Nothing particularly special that I remember.
Round 4, we're on the circle where Taylor's timing. Apparently we were 1 second off the marathon medley record and could have broken it if Brian had run faster and not decided to try and conserve energy. We win round 4 as well.
So rounds 1-4 were beautiful. Round 5, not so much. We started out DQing sprint race, and had at least one more DQ (on balloon I think...). Still, we put up a REALLY good fight, missing first place on our circle and going on to gold round by two points. But it's alright, because we did better than I was expecting (I expected to get to bronze round, round 4, and then drop out). This is MUCH farther than any other team in Grace Covenant history has ever gone. Unfortunately, when the round was over we weren't thinking that, because the line judges DQed us on boy's tug even though we thought they were wrong...so Everett challenged it but the line judge's wouldn't change. Had we not been DQed in that event we would have gone on. So we're all slipping into a bad mood, when the circle director comes up to us and says that DQing all three teams was the best they could possibly do based on what they saw. He then went on to say he needed prayer because his wife had died twelve weeks beforehand! I felt SO guilty when he said that, but I was also amazed that he was even there! We all put our hands on him, and Everett prayed...in that moment, I felt overwhelmed by what God was showing me. How could I possibly be complaining about a silver round finish, when others were going through such difficult circumstances? I felt so many emotions in that moment...grief for the circle director, awe at the Christian fellowship, joy for God's obvious hand on our team that day, happiness at our finish, anger at myself for getting angry at the line judges, sadness that I was done, my last year of Summit EVER was over...I started bawling. No joke. I was overwhelmed by everything. And I wasn't the only one crying, I saw several other girls crying. Then the hugs started going around...there was a sense of finalty in those moments that I really can't describe. That was it. MY YEARS OF SUMMIT COMPETITION WERE OVER. And I didn't know what to do in that moment. So I just clung to my teammates. Hugs must be God's way of giving His comfort in a tangible way. I was incredibly overwhelmed in that moment, but if I was hugging a teammate, everything was okay.
Finally we watched the gold round. The team we lost to got second, team new england #1 got first. I FINALLY GOT TO MEET NEWENGLANDITE08 FROM THE AWANA FORUMS!!!!! I've been meaning to meet him at Summit for the past three years. No joke. Ever since Chicago year. And I FINALLY got to!!
Games were amazing. Even after getting pulled out of several of the events I wanted to do I still had an amazing time. God was so evident that day. And, believe it or not, that day I fell in love with the one event I've always hated the most. That's right. I fell in love with tug. Too bad I fell in love with it the LAST TIME I would ever compete in it!!!! Urgh...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
SUMMIT-Saturday-Afternoon & Evening
Okay...*Deep Breath*...this is the post I have been dreading writing. I was in a bad mood all of Saturday afternoon and evening. Just as a disclaimer, this is all how I felt about the events as they were going on, not necessarily how I feel about them now.
So after Rachel Wohl's fine arts performance, we decide we are going to practice games with Alex and then go to the beach. So we all get changed into our games clothes and go find a place to practice. At the beginning of the practice, we all sit down and Marcelo reads off what I'm led to believe is the final set-up for who's playing what the next day. We all knew that somebody was going to get shafted for Alex since she's a really good athlete, but as Marcelo's reading off the list I'm keeping track of how many events Alex has in addition to how many events I had. To give you some perspective, before Alex came into the picture, I was in five events, three of which were playoff events. When Marcelo is finished reading, I am in three events in round one and ZERO events in the remainder of the rounds. Alex is in SIX events, FOUR of which are playoff events. I was FURIOUS. I put in hours upon hours of practice and working out for these games, starting way back in October. Alex, on the other hand, while being very active and involved in a lot of sports, had not practiced with us one single time before this. Not only that, but she has two more years after this. How many do I have? ZERO! I AM A SENIOR!!! Could they not have shafted one of the other girls, or try spreading out the shafting instead of only having one person step out? Honestly, the only language that could describe how I felt at that moment is language I refuse to use. But I'm not going to let anyone know I'm upset...no siree, because games doesn't matter in the big scheme of things and God has a bigger plan and...oh, what the heck, who am I kidding? I leave the practice and find a restroom and cry for a little while, because yes, I am very upset...but I know that if I leave for too long, people will know something's up. So I force myself to stop crying and head back to the practice. So they only practice balloon and basketball, two events that I'm no longer in, so I'm just sitting there. You know how hard it is to keep your emotions hidden when you're just sitting there? Basically impossible. Rachel Wohl notices I'm not happy and makes me promise that I will talk to her later. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, right then...but they were all practicing, so I couldn't. FINALLY the practice ends, we eat lunch (pizza), then go back up to the rooms to change to go to the beach. I had lost my sunglasses so Mrs. Wohl takes me down to the gift shop to get a pair before we leave.
So we go to the beach. Everyone else had a fun time, but I didn't. I hated pretty much every minute we were there. I was in a very bad mood, and I knew it, but I also had no desire to even try to change my attitude. What I wanted to do what to swim and jump waves in the ocean, take the emotions I was feeling and channel it into the energy it would take to move around in the waves...but my knee wound from the night before was still bothering me, and as soon as I attempted to go knee deep in the ocean, the saltwater stung the wound really, really bad. So I just went back up to the sand. Rachel Barnett buried me in the sand and made me a mermaid...that was fun and helped take my mind off of games a little bit. We also threw around the frisbee a little, which was fun. Then we tried to play an actual game of ultimate...not so fun.
After the beach we go eat dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. I hadn't brought a towel, the sun was setting, we were sitting outside in the shade, and the wind was blowing. I WAS FREEZING COLD!!!! I think I just spent most of dinner shivering and trying not to get hypothermia. Dinner was good, but dessert was AMAZING...chocolate cake and banana crepes. YUM!
We were supposed to have devotions on the beach after dinner, but several of us were just way too cold, so we went back to the hotel. On the way back, Everett kept teasing me by touching my knee around the wound. Every time his hand would reach out, I always reacted, eventhough I knew he wasn't going to actually touch the wound. When we got back to the hotel, Everett gets of the bus right in front of me. I'm on the steps right above him, I pause to tell someone something, and then Everett goes for my knee once again...I see it out of the corner of my eye and react by turning TOWARDS him...so he hits me right in the wound. IT HURT SOOOOOO BAD...for about ten seconds. After that it didn't actually hurt anymore, but the tears that had sprung to my eyes from the sudden pain were still rolling down my cheeks. Anyways, we get up to the fifth floor, and Altobelli tells us all to take showers and then come back to the boy's room for devotions. So we go to take our showers. I take mine first, and after I finished and was waiting for the other girls in my room to take their showers, I heard a knock on the door. On the other side of that door was the one bright spot in my day, the one thing that made me happy in a time period of depression. I opened the door and saw Altobelli, and he pointed to someone and said "It's his fault". I looked around the doorpost to see who "he" was, and Adam Hardy was standing there! Red hair, big smile and all! I gave him a hug, and then he told me he was leaving that night and had come by to say good-bye. "Well then, when you win public speaking tomorrow, I'll go accept your award for you!" I said. "Well, you'll probably have to fight my coach for it," he replied. We chatted for about a minute longer, then he said "Well, I guess I'll see you around...sometime. Maybe not for awhile. Maybe not even on this side of paradise!" I knew what he was getting at. We see eachother at AWANA events and debate tournaments, both things that were ending for us since we were seniors. But I quickly correct him and told him that I would see him much sooner than that. "I'll definitely come up and see you at Howard Payne. I still owe Tabitha a visit."
So when the team gathers back together, Altobelli decides to go around and have us all say our high and low point for the day. People start talking...pretty much everyone was talking about how the beach was such a great high, and how the team had seemed really unified that day and basically going on and on about how the whole day was such a high...as we keep going around the room I am only getting more and more depressed. And I thought I was ALREADY in a bad mood. When it gets to me, I just say to skip me. And so it continues...more and more highs, and almost no lows. In fact the ONLY low I can remember is Everett's which was hitting me in the knee...only he was LAUGHING as he said it! I finally got to the point where I believed that he really was sorry...two days later. But that's later. Right NOW, I was only getting more and more upset as more and more people were going on and on about how great the day was. So finally pretty much everyone's gone except me. I have absolutely NO CLUE what I said my high was, it probably was something about fine arts...but then it gets to my low. And as much as I really, really, really don't want to talk about it, I can't lie either...so I just say that I had a low but I would really rather not talk about it. Then Rachel Barnett says "Shaney, we all pretty much know it's about games, right?" Oh. My. Gosh. I JUST SAID I DIDN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!!! CAN'T YOU RESPECT THAT!?????? Oh my word I was sooooooooooooooo ticked at Rachel for that. But that got eclipsed in what happened next. Altobelli said, "Actually, I had wanted to talk about that..." but I cut him off. I looked at him and said as clearly as I could, "Please DO NOT talk about this. I really DO NOT want you to talk about this. Because I am still upset about it, and if you do talk about it I am going to cry right here in front of everybody and I REALLY do not want to do that!" So Altobelli says something along the lines of "Okay, I understand, but I really think this needs to be said..." and then proceeds to talk for what feels like forever about how God gave different people different gifts and that applies to games and such (which, as a side note, wasn't really the point and why I was upset)...and, just I said, I started to cry in front of EVERYONE!!!!! WHAT THE FREAKIN' HECK???? DO YOU REALLY NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WORDS "DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT" MEAN????? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO EXACTLY WHAT I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO??????!!!!!! Oh. My. Gosh. Words don't even begin to describe just how FURIOUS I was with Altobelli. I don't even remember what happened for the rest of the meeting. And, in all honesty, I was too furious to care.
But I did manage to force myself to stop crying. But I knew I had a lot more tears to get out. So once the meeting is over, I head back to the room with my roommates, then tell them "I'm going out of the room for a little bit, I don't have a key so don't close the door." Then I start moving down the hallway, looking for a good place to be alone. I knew exactly what I was looking for: The stairwell. I didn't know where it was, but I knew it had to be somewhere. Finally, I found it. The door to the stairwell. So I went into the stairwell. There happened to be a big window seat right in front of a window overlooking the river. So I curled up in the corner of the windowseat. And finally, finally, after being upset all day and wanting some time alone but never getting it, I just let my tears flow. I was bawling. Sure, I've been upset and angry in the past, but I seriously cannot remember the last time I was so furious with MULTIPLE friends. I tried to pray, I started to ask God to change my attitude and help me to focus on the eternal, not the temporal, but I was crying too hard to focus. I really don't know how long I cried, I just know that I cried long enough that finally I couldn't cry any longer, even though there were still tears that I could feel that needed to be shed. Finally, I was just sitting there, looking out beyond the river. I had no watch on, had not bothered to check the time before I left, and had absolutely no clue whatsoever how long I had been gone. All I knew is that it felt like a long time...but I still didn't want to go back. There were still enough tears left that the smallest thing, even seeing the face of one of my teammates, could potentially set off another flood of tears...but finally I decided I had to go back, lest I cause the rest of my team to worry. So I walk out the door into the hallway, and the first thing I see is Rachel B. and Altobelli talking to each other. No way am I dealing with seeing both of them. So I run back into the stairwell before either of them sees me. I wait for another two to five minutes, then try again...as soon as I walk the door, Rose GRABS me and starts talking at a million miles a minute..."Omigosh, Shaney, where have you been???" And then proceeded to say a million and one other things that I didn't really understand...Rose is talking as we're walking down the hall, finally I make it back to my room. Rebecca is the first one I see when I walk in, she gives me a hug...and I start crying all over again. Rachel Wohl is on the phone, but as soon as she gets off she comes over and gives me a hug...finally she says, "Do you want to talk?" I said that YES, I did want to talk, but not there...so I take Rachel with me back to the stairwell and spill out my frustrations with games. She listened, which was nice, but even after venting everything I still wasn't okay like I thought I would be...I know I need to talk to an adult. Altobelli is out. There is nooooooo way I am talking to him at that point. Everett...well, I could talk to him, but I didn't think he'd be able to deal with the fact that I was crying. So I ask Rachel to go get her mom. Mrs. Wohl comes in and hears me tell the whole story over again. She was soooo helpful, she started asking all sorts of questions that helped me think through what I needed to do next. Finally, she and I both agreed that I needed to talk to Arielle that night. So I go out, knock on the door of the other girl's room, and ask to talk to Arielle. And I am so glad I did. She is such a sweet girl, and she was blatantly honest with me. Turns out she and Marcelo had made several possible lists, and the one that he had read was the one that put Alex in as much as possible, but they had other possibilities lined up. They had just used that lineup for practice since Alex hadn't practiced with the team before. Arielle told me about several of the other possibilities and why they would or wouldn't use them. She didn't tell me for certain what the lineup would be, but she was honest with me about what was likely to happen. She also explained a lot of the reasoning behind certain lineups, which, while I didn't agree with everything, still made a lot of sense. I was so glad I talked to her. She and I actually ended up talking about a couple other things not completely related to games, just mostly "girl talk"...all of a sudden, I hear a door slam. I look down the hall and I see Brian and Marcelo walking towards us. I hear Brian exclaim "Shaney's back?!?!?" and Arielle replies "yeah, she's been back for awhile". Apparently I had been gone long enough that everybody knew I was missing and people had gone searching for me. Yikes. I'm not sure why but for some reason, despite not being in a particularly bad mood anymore I still had no desire to see any of the guys. So I jump up as fast as I can and run into my room. Arielle shoos the boys away and then calls to me, "It's alright Shaney, they're gone". So I come back out and we talk a little bit longer. In the end, although I still wasn't 100% happy with the decisions made about the lineup, the fact that Arielle was willing to talk to me about it and be completely honest with me about what she was thinking made it a whole lot easier for me to accept the final lineup when it was read the next day.
So yeah, that was my horrible day at Summit. Looking back, I feel like a complete jerk for just letting myself be in a bad mood that day and cause myself not to enjoy the beach because of my awful attitude. I was also a jerk for running away and getting everybody all worried. The sad part was, I could have prevented it by talking to Arielle earlier in the day instead of waiting until late at night. Yeah, I blew it that day.
So after Rachel Wohl's fine arts performance, we decide we are going to practice games with Alex and then go to the beach. So we all get changed into our games clothes and go find a place to practice. At the beginning of the practice, we all sit down and Marcelo reads off what I'm led to believe is the final set-up for who's playing what the next day. We all knew that somebody was going to get shafted for Alex since she's a really good athlete, but as Marcelo's reading off the list I'm keeping track of how many events Alex has in addition to how many events I had. To give you some perspective, before Alex came into the picture, I was in five events, three of which were playoff events. When Marcelo is finished reading, I am in three events in round one and ZERO events in the remainder of the rounds. Alex is in SIX events, FOUR of which are playoff events. I was FURIOUS. I put in hours upon hours of practice and working out for these games, starting way back in October. Alex, on the other hand, while being very active and involved in a lot of sports, had not practiced with us one single time before this. Not only that, but she has two more years after this. How many do I have? ZERO! I AM A SENIOR!!! Could they not have shafted one of the other girls, or try spreading out the shafting instead of only having one person step out? Honestly, the only language that could describe how I felt at that moment is language I refuse to use. But I'm not going to let anyone know I'm upset...no siree, because games doesn't matter in the big scheme of things and God has a bigger plan and...oh, what the heck, who am I kidding? I leave the practice and find a restroom and cry for a little while, because yes, I am very upset...but I know that if I leave for too long, people will know something's up. So I force myself to stop crying and head back to the practice. So they only practice balloon and basketball, two events that I'm no longer in, so I'm just sitting there. You know how hard it is to keep your emotions hidden when you're just sitting there? Basically impossible. Rachel Wohl notices I'm not happy and makes me promise that I will talk to her later. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, right then...but they were all practicing, so I couldn't. FINALLY the practice ends, we eat lunch (pizza), then go back up to the rooms to change to go to the beach. I had lost my sunglasses so Mrs. Wohl takes me down to the gift shop to get a pair before we leave.
So we go to the beach. Everyone else had a fun time, but I didn't. I hated pretty much every minute we were there. I was in a very bad mood, and I knew it, but I also had no desire to even try to change my attitude. What I wanted to do what to swim and jump waves in the ocean, take the emotions I was feeling and channel it into the energy it would take to move around in the waves...but my knee wound from the night before was still bothering me, and as soon as I attempted to go knee deep in the ocean, the saltwater stung the wound really, really bad. So I just went back up to the sand. Rachel Barnett buried me in the sand and made me a mermaid...that was fun and helped take my mind off of games a little bit. We also threw around the frisbee a little, which was fun. Then we tried to play an actual game of ultimate...not so fun.
After the beach we go eat dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. I hadn't brought a towel, the sun was setting, we were sitting outside in the shade, and the wind was blowing. I WAS FREEZING COLD!!!! I think I just spent most of dinner shivering and trying not to get hypothermia. Dinner was good, but dessert was AMAZING...chocolate cake and banana crepes. YUM!
We were supposed to have devotions on the beach after dinner, but several of us were just way too cold, so we went back to the hotel. On the way back, Everett kept teasing me by touching my knee around the wound. Every time his hand would reach out, I always reacted, eventhough I knew he wasn't going to actually touch the wound. When we got back to the hotel, Everett gets of the bus right in front of me. I'm on the steps right above him, I pause to tell someone something, and then Everett goes for my knee once again...I see it out of the corner of my eye and react by turning TOWARDS him...so he hits me right in the wound. IT HURT SOOOOOO BAD...for about ten seconds. After that it didn't actually hurt anymore, but the tears that had sprung to my eyes from the sudden pain were still rolling down my cheeks. Anyways, we get up to the fifth floor, and Altobelli tells us all to take showers and then come back to the boy's room for devotions. So we go to take our showers. I take mine first, and after I finished and was waiting for the other girls in my room to take their showers, I heard a knock on the door. On the other side of that door was the one bright spot in my day, the one thing that made me happy in a time period of depression. I opened the door and saw Altobelli, and he pointed to someone and said "It's his fault". I looked around the doorpost to see who "he" was, and Adam Hardy was standing there! Red hair, big smile and all! I gave him a hug, and then he told me he was leaving that night and had come by to say good-bye. "Well then, when you win public speaking tomorrow, I'll go accept your award for you!" I said. "Well, you'll probably have to fight my coach for it," he replied. We chatted for about a minute longer, then he said "Well, I guess I'll see you around...sometime. Maybe not for awhile. Maybe not even on this side of paradise!" I knew what he was getting at. We see eachother at AWANA events and debate tournaments, both things that were ending for us since we were seniors. But I quickly correct him and told him that I would see him much sooner than that. "I'll definitely come up and see you at Howard Payne. I still owe Tabitha a visit."
So when the team gathers back together, Altobelli decides to go around and have us all say our high and low point for the day. People start talking...pretty much everyone was talking about how the beach was such a great high, and how the team had seemed really unified that day and basically going on and on about how the whole day was such a high...as we keep going around the room I am only getting more and more depressed. And I thought I was ALREADY in a bad mood. When it gets to me, I just say to skip me. And so it continues...more and more highs, and almost no lows. In fact the ONLY low I can remember is Everett's which was hitting me in the knee...only he was LAUGHING as he said it! I finally got to the point where I believed that he really was sorry...two days later. But that's later. Right NOW, I was only getting more and more upset as more and more people were going on and on about how great the day was. So finally pretty much everyone's gone except me. I have absolutely NO CLUE what I said my high was, it probably was something about fine arts...but then it gets to my low. And as much as I really, really, really don't want to talk about it, I can't lie either...so I just say that I had a low but I would really rather not talk about it. Then Rachel Barnett says "Shaney, we all pretty much know it's about games, right?" Oh. My. Gosh. I JUST SAID I DIDN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!!! CAN'T YOU RESPECT THAT!?????? Oh my word I was sooooooooooooooo ticked at Rachel for that. But that got eclipsed in what happened next. Altobelli said, "Actually, I had wanted to talk about that..." but I cut him off. I looked at him and said as clearly as I could, "Please DO NOT talk about this. I really DO NOT want you to talk about this. Because I am still upset about it, and if you do talk about it I am going to cry right here in front of everybody and I REALLY do not want to do that!" So Altobelli says something along the lines of "Okay, I understand, but I really think this needs to be said..." and then proceeds to talk for what feels like forever about how God gave different people different gifts and that applies to games and such (which, as a side note, wasn't really the point and why I was upset)...and, just I said, I started to cry in front of EVERYONE!!!!! WHAT THE FREAKIN' HECK???? DO YOU REALLY NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WORDS "DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT" MEAN????? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO EXACTLY WHAT I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO??????!!!!!! Oh. My. Gosh. Words don't even begin to describe just how FURIOUS I was with Altobelli. I don't even remember what happened for the rest of the meeting. And, in all honesty, I was too furious to care.
But I did manage to force myself to stop crying. But I knew I had a lot more tears to get out. So once the meeting is over, I head back to the room with my roommates, then tell them "I'm going out of the room for a little bit, I don't have a key so don't close the door." Then I start moving down the hallway, looking for a good place to be alone. I knew exactly what I was looking for: The stairwell. I didn't know where it was, but I knew it had to be somewhere. Finally, I found it. The door to the stairwell. So I went into the stairwell. There happened to be a big window seat right in front of a window overlooking the river. So I curled up in the corner of the windowseat. And finally, finally, after being upset all day and wanting some time alone but never getting it, I just let my tears flow. I was bawling. Sure, I've been upset and angry in the past, but I seriously cannot remember the last time I was so furious with MULTIPLE friends. I tried to pray, I started to ask God to change my attitude and help me to focus on the eternal, not the temporal, but I was crying too hard to focus. I really don't know how long I cried, I just know that I cried long enough that finally I couldn't cry any longer, even though there were still tears that I could feel that needed to be shed. Finally, I was just sitting there, looking out beyond the river. I had no watch on, had not bothered to check the time before I left, and had absolutely no clue whatsoever how long I had been gone. All I knew is that it felt like a long time...but I still didn't want to go back. There were still enough tears left that the smallest thing, even seeing the face of one of my teammates, could potentially set off another flood of tears...but finally I decided I had to go back, lest I cause the rest of my team to worry. So I walk out the door into the hallway, and the first thing I see is Rachel B. and Altobelli talking to each other. No way am I dealing with seeing both of them. So I run back into the stairwell before either of them sees me. I wait for another two to five minutes, then try again...as soon as I walk the door, Rose GRABS me and starts talking at a million miles a minute..."Omigosh, Shaney, where have you been???" And then proceeded to say a million and one other things that I didn't really understand...Rose is talking as we're walking down the hall, finally I make it back to my room. Rebecca is the first one I see when I walk in, she gives me a hug...and I start crying all over again. Rachel Wohl is on the phone, but as soon as she gets off she comes over and gives me a hug...finally she says, "Do you want to talk?" I said that YES, I did want to talk, but not there...so I take Rachel with me back to the stairwell and spill out my frustrations with games. She listened, which was nice, but even after venting everything I still wasn't okay like I thought I would be...I know I need to talk to an adult. Altobelli is out. There is nooooooo way I am talking to him at that point. Everett...well, I could talk to him, but I didn't think he'd be able to deal with the fact that I was crying. So I ask Rachel to go get her mom. Mrs. Wohl comes in and hears me tell the whole story over again. She was soooo helpful, she started asking all sorts of questions that helped me think through what I needed to do next. Finally, she and I both agreed that I needed to talk to Arielle that night. So I go out, knock on the door of the other girl's room, and ask to talk to Arielle. And I am so glad I did. She is such a sweet girl, and she was blatantly honest with me. Turns out she and Marcelo had made several possible lists, and the one that he had read was the one that put Alex in as much as possible, but they had other possibilities lined up. They had just used that lineup for practice since Alex hadn't practiced with the team before. Arielle told me about several of the other possibilities and why they would or wouldn't use them. She didn't tell me for certain what the lineup would be, but she was honest with me about what was likely to happen. She also explained a lot of the reasoning behind certain lineups, which, while I didn't agree with everything, still made a lot of sense. I was so glad I talked to her. She and I actually ended up talking about a couple other things not completely related to games, just mostly "girl talk"...all of a sudden, I hear a door slam. I look down the hall and I see Brian and Marcelo walking towards us. I hear Brian exclaim "Shaney's back?!?!?" and Arielle replies "yeah, she's been back for awhile". Apparently I had been gone long enough that everybody knew I was missing and people had gone searching for me. Yikes. I'm not sure why but for some reason, despite not being in a particularly bad mood anymore I still had no desire to see any of the guys. So I jump up as fast as I can and run into my room. Arielle shoos the boys away and then calls to me, "It's alright Shaney, they're gone". So I come back out and we talk a little bit longer. In the end, although I still wasn't 100% happy with the decisions made about the lineup, the fact that Arielle was willing to talk to me about it and be completely honest with me about what she was thinking made it a whole lot easier for me to accept the final lineup when it was read the next day.
So yeah, that was my horrible day at Summit. Looking back, I feel like a complete jerk for just letting myself be in a bad mood that day and cause myself not to enjoy the beach because of my awful attitude. I was also a jerk for running away and getting everybody all worried. The sad part was, I could have prevented it by talking to Arielle earlier in the day instead of waiting until late at night. Yeah, I blew it that day.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
SUMMIT-Saturday-Fine Arts
Saturday morning was fine arts. I hadn't touched a piano since Tuesday, and there was only one practice room, which I never got around to signing up for. So Friday night I ask Rebecca what the earliest time slot was for the room, and decided I would get up early enough to go practice. She said the earliest time slot was at 8 am, so I woke up at 7-ish and went down to practice at 7:30 (Amanda decided to come with me). Unfortunately, it turned out that the earliest practice session was at 7 am instead of 8 am, and someone was already in there practicing. I was disappointed but knew that it was my fault for not getting a practice slot, so we went back upstairs. Amanda sits down to write her music, and I learned that she did not have her music prepared for her flute solo. I had found out on the bus that she had left it at home, but she had blank staff paper that she had been using to write the music out on the bus, and I had assumed that between Thursday and Friday she had found time to finish that copy and make two more copies. Obviously I was wrong. Andy had gotten someone at the front desk to copy the coach's index Thursday night, so I told Amanda to hurry up and finish that copy and take it downstairs to make the other two copies. She finishes writing out the music, and both she and I get dressed for her flute solo.
While Amanda goes to make her other copies, I go to watch Rebecca Garia's piano solo. It was AMAZING!!! She did really well! She ended up getting a gold medal for that, which she definitely deserved! Her piano solo was at 8:50; Amanda's flute solo was at 9:15. After Rebecca's solo, Amanda was nowhere to be found. So I rush downstairs to find her eating breakfast. I felt bad, but I told her to stop eating and made her come up with me to the instrumental solo room. She and I warmed up. I'm not sure what Amanda did, but there were a couple rough spots in the accompaniment for myself so I just went over those parts over and over. Finally it was Amanda's turn to go. She introduced herself, and I could tell she was nervous. At the beginning of the song, Amanda plays by herself with no accompaniment. She starts out with Amazing Grace, and then transitions to Come Thou Fount. But instead of starting out with Amazing Grace, Amanda starts with Come Thou Fount. I just sat there wondering exactly what I was going to do, but figured we'd get through it. All of a sudden, Amanda realizes what she's done, stops, says "Why did I do that?" and starts over. Despite that rocky start, Amanda did really well with her solo. Last year she had trouble remembering the music, but that wasn't a problem for her this year. She got silver. Ben went right after Amanda with his violin solo. I had heard it a couple times without the accompaniment, but WITH the accompaniment it seriously sounded ten times better! I had to restrain myself from clapping in time with the song. It was SOOOO good!!! Ben got gold for his solo, of course!
After Ben's solo, I hurried upstairs to change from the dress I was wearing into my suit for my public speaking. Brian went before me. He combined his two facebook notes "Ashes to Ashes" and "True Love". Perhaps it was just me, but I didn't think the two messages together flowed nearly as nicely as either message does standing on its own. Nevertheless, he did a good job and got silver. After Brian finished his speech, I went off to the corner of the room and started warming up my Indian accent that I use in my speech. I was REALLY nervous for some reason. Rachel, Amanda, and Daniel prayed with me, which helped. Then my mom, Mrs. Garia, and Mrs. Snodgrass all prayed with me too, which helped a LOT. I don't know what it is, but there is something about mother's prayers that makes them really special. I can't put my finger on what it is, but they really are. Then, it's my turn. I give the judges my outline, tell them that it's in the teens/adult category and 15-20 minutes long. Then they ask whether the speech is an original or a retelling of a story, drama, etc. So I explain that I start out with original material, then transition into retelling a story, then transition back to an original gospel presentation. I was really nervous during the original parts of the speech-I had only written them about a week before. I felt like I stumbled over a lot of words and didn't use emphasis where I had wanted to. But the dramatic interp was a lot of fun. I've worked on that since October or November and I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty comfortable with it. At the end of the speech, although I felt I could have done better, I was satisfied with how it went. I didn't find this out until later, but apparently I made Mrs. Garia and Mrs. Snodgrass cry.
After my speech, I took my garment bag (which had my piano solo dress in it), went to the restroom, and changed for the fourth time that day (Mr. Altobelli started making fun of me for that). I may be wrong on this, and if I am Amanda can correct me, but I'm pretty sure after I changed that Amanda took my garment bag with her upstairs to change into her (really my) expressive arts dress and get ready for her dance. Andy's piano solo was at 11:00. He did well with it and got silver. My piano solo was right after him at 11:10. Due to not having practiced my song since Tuesday, I had several memory slips and other problems. I didn't feel like I did well, but I still managed to get silver. After my piano solo, Mrs. Wohl informs me that Amanda is missing something and is having a breakdown upstairs. So I rush upstairs to be informed by Amanda that she does not have her music for her dance. I start thinking and decide that the only way Amanda is going to get her song is to download it off the internet. Knowing that Brian and Marcelo had their laptops, I instructed her to go find one of them and have them download it for her (despite not having her expressive arts CD, she did have a random blank CD). I had my credit card and was ready to pay for it, but luckily Marcelo had an iTunes gift card that he used. I then send Amanda to go get her outline. After a while, she has not come downstairs, so I run upstairs to see what's taking her so long. She informs me that she cannot find her outline. Had she realized that earlier in the week, or even the day, she could have easily written out her outline and had it ready. But at this point she is supposed to be ready to perform in five minutes. There is absolutely no time. And although I'm pretty good at finding ways to work around problems (last year the CD for our dance broke, but we realized it before we even left so I was able to get Amanda's dad to e-mail us the song and we downloaded it onto a CD), this was one problem that we were NOT going to be able to work around in five minutes. So I just looked her in the eye and told her she was going to go downstairs and tell the judges that she didn't have an outline for them. I was pretty irritated at this point (don't worry Amanda, I still love you!) So we get down there and set up the CD player. I really wish we had had time to go through the entire song and make sure it had downloaded correctly, but we didn't so I just played the first 30 seconds, pretending to be adjusting the volume. Since those first 30 seconds worked fine, I had to just go on faith that the rest of the CD worked as well. The judges were really nice about Amanda forgetting her outline. They gave her a sheet of paper and asked her to write a paragraph or so of her thoughts on what she was doing. So she quickly scribbled a paragraph on how we should be able to use dance to worship the Lord. Finally, Amanda got up to do her dance. It started out okay, but around the first chorus the CD and the player started having major problems and it kept skipping. I didn't watch a good amount of Amanda's dance, actually, because I would close my eyes and pray that the CD would stop skipping. But I did get to see most of it. There were parts that I could definitely tell she was improvising. And pretty early on in the dance, the left ballet slipper came off her heel and she had to do the rest of the dance with it hanging off. She seemed really poised for all the problems she was having. I was expecting her to get a really bad score because of all the problems, pretty much all of them having to do with lack of preparation, but she ended up getting bronze. Our last fine arts performer, Rachel Wohl, did a classical ballet dance to a song by Tchaikowsky (sp?) as an interpretation of Psalm 23. To tell you the truth, I was a bit skeptical, but I was TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY by the dance! The only complaint I would have is that I didn't feel the dance interpreted all parts of Psalm 23, only certain parts. But that's it. Other than that, it was wonderful, her technique was awesome, and the parts that she did interpret were interpreted wonderfully. I truly, honestly thought that she would get gold or silver. She spent hours preparing this dance, and it showed. But you know what she got? Not gold. Not silver. Not even bronze. That's right, she got participation! I was SO furious when I found out. In all honesty, I have never been happy with the way fine arts judges judge, but this year was definitely the worst. If Amanda, with all the problems she had and the lack of technique, got bronze, then Rachel deserved at least silver! The judges preferred Amanda's dance because her song had lyrics, and they felt Rachel's dance wasn't spiritual enough. I am SO MAD about this! A well-executed dance set to classical music is MUCH more spirtually edifying than a dance to a song with lyrics which is not well prepared. I really need to sit down and write a letter to awana stating my problems with the expressive arts judges. They really don't know how to judge properly. Maybe when I go back next year I'll judge expressive arts.
Anyways, that was fine arts...
While Amanda goes to make her other copies, I go to watch Rebecca Garia's piano solo. It was AMAZING!!! She did really well! She ended up getting a gold medal for that, which she definitely deserved! Her piano solo was at 8:50; Amanda's flute solo was at 9:15. After Rebecca's solo, Amanda was nowhere to be found. So I rush downstairs to find her eating breakfast. I felt bad, but I told her to stop eating and made her come up with me to the instrumental solo room. She and I warmed up. I'm not sure what Amanda did, but there were a couple rough spots in the accompaniment for myself so I just went over those parts over and over. Finally it was Amanda's turn to go. She introduced herself, and I could tell she was nervous. At the beginning of the song, Amanda plays by herself with no accompaniment. She starts out with Amazing Grace, and then transitions to Come Thou Fount. But instead of starting out with Amazing Grace, Amanda starts with Come Thou Fount. I just sat there wondering exactly what I was going to do, but figured we'd get through it. All of a sudden, Amanda realizes what she's done, stops, says "Why did I do that?" and starts over. Despite that rocky start, Amanda did really well with her solo. Last year she had trouble remembering the music, but that wasn't a problem for her this year. She got silver. Ben went right after Amanda with his violin solo. I had heard it a couple times without the accompaniment, but WITH the accompaniment it seriously sounded ten times better! I had to restrain myself from clapping in time with the song. It was SOOOO good!!! Ben got gold for his solo, of course!
After Ben's solo, I hurried upstairs to change from the dress I was wearing into my suit for my public speaking. Brian went before me. He combined his two facebook notes "Ashes to Ashes" and "True Love". Perhaps it was just me, but I didn't think the two messages together flowed nearly as nicely as either message does standing on its own. Nevertheless, he did a good job and got silver. After Brian finished his speech, I went off to the corner of the room and started warming up my Indian accent that I use in my speech. I was REALLY nervous for some reason. Rachel, Amanda, and Daniel prayed with me, which helped. Then my mom, Mrs. Garia, and Mrs. Snodgrass all prayed with me too, which helped a LOT. I don't know what it is, but there is something about mother's prayers that makes them really special. I can't put my finger on what it is, but they really are. Then, it's my turn. I give the judges my outline, tell them that it's in the teens/adult category and 15-20 minutes long. Then they ask whether the speech is an original or a retelling of a story, drama, etc. So I explain that I start out with original material, then transition into retelling a story, then transition back to an original gospel presentation. I was really nervous during the original parts of the speech-I had only written them about a week before. I felt like I stumbled over a lot of words and didn't use emphasis where I had wanted to. But the dramatic interp was a lot of fun. I've worked on that since October or November and I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty comfortable with it. At the end of the speech, although I felt I could have done better, I was satisfied with how it went. I didn't find this out until later, but apparently I made Mrs. Garia and Mrs. Snodgrass cry.
After my speech, I took my garment bag (which had my piano solo dress in it), went to the restroom, and changed for the fourth time that day (Mr. Altobelli started making fun of me for that). I may be wrong on this, and if I am Amanda can correct me, but I'm pretty sure after I changed that Amanda took my garment bag with her upstairs to change into her (really my) expressive arts dress and get ready for her dance. Andy's piano solo was at 11:00. He did well with it and got silver. My piano solo was right after him at 11:10. Due to not having practiced my song since Tuesday, I had several memory slips and other problems. I didn't feel like I did well, but I still managed to get silver. After my piano solo, Mrs. Wohl informs me that Amanda is missing something and is having a breakdown upstairs. So I rush upstairs to be informed by Amanda that she does not have her music for her dance. I start thinking and decide that the only way Amanda is going to get her song is to download it off the internet. Knowing that Brian and Marcelo had their laptops, I instructed her to go find one of them and have them download it for her (despite not having her expressive arts CD, she did have a random blank CD). I had my credit card and was ready to pay for it, but luckily Marcelo had an iTunes gift card that he used. I then send Amanda to go get her outline. After a while, she has not come downstairs, so I run upstairs to see what's taking her so long. She informs me that she cannot find her outline. Had she realized that earlier in the week, or even the day, she could have easily written out her outline and had it ready. But at this point she is supposed to be ready to perform in five minutes. There is absolutely no time. And although I'm pretty good at finding ways to work around problems (last year the CD for our dance broke, but we realized it before we even left so I was able to get Amanda's dad to e-mail us the song and we downloaded it onto a CD), this was one problem that we were NOT going to be able to work around in five minutes. So I just looked her in the eye and told her she was going to go downstairs and tell the judges that she didn't have an outline for them. I was pretty irritated at this point (don't worry Amanda, I still love you!) So we get down there and set up the CD player. I really wish we had had time to go through the entire song and make sure it had downloaded correctly, but we didn't so I just played the first 30 seconds, pretending to be adjusting the volume. Since those first 30 seconds worked fine, I had to just go on faith that the rest of the CD worked as well. The judges were really nice about Amanda forgetting her outline. They gave her a sheet of paper and asked her to write a paragraph or so of her thoughts on what she was doing. So she quickly scribbled a paragraph on how we should be able to use dance to worship the Lord. Finally, Amanda got up to do her dance. It started out okay, but around the first chorus the CD and the player started having major problems and it kept skipping. I didn't watch a good amount of Amanda's dance, actually, because I would close my eyes and pray that the CD would stop skipping. But I did get to see most of it. There were parts that I could definitely tell she was improvising. And pretty early on in the dance, the left ballet slipper came off her heel and she had to do the rest of the dance with it hanging off. She seemed really poised for all the problems she was having. I was expecting her to get a really bad score because of all the problems, pretty much all of them having to do with lack of preparation, but she ended up getting bronze. Our last fine arts performer, Rachel Wohl, did a classical ballet dance to a song by Tchaikowsky (sp?) as an interpretation of Psalm 23. To tell you the truth, I was a bit skeptical, but I was TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY by the dance! The only complaint I would have is that I didn't feel the dance interpreted all parts of Psalm 23, only certain parts. But that's it. Other than that, it was wonderful, her technique was awesome, and the parts that she did interpret were interpreted wonderfully. I truly, honestly thought that she would get gold or silver. She spent hours preparing this dance, and it showed. But you know what she got? Not gold. Not silver. Not even bronze. That's right, she got participation! I was SO furious when I found out. In all honesty, I have never been happy with the way fine arts judges judge, but this year was definitely the worst. If Amanda, with all the problems she had and the lack of technique, got bronze, then Rachel deserved at least silver! The judges preferred Amanda's dance because her song had lyrics, and they felt Rachel's dance wasn't spiritual enough. I am SO MAD about this! A well-executed dance set to classical music is MUCH more spirtually edifying than a dance to a song with lyrics which is not well prepared. I really need to sit down and write a letter to awana stating my problems with the expressive arts judges. They really don't know how to judge properly. Maybe when I go back next year I'll judge expressive arts.
Anyways, that was fine arts...
Saturday, May 10, 2008
SUMMIT-Friday-Evening
So after citation ceremony we go out to eat. We finally got to walk over the bridge over the river, which is really nice at night. I don't remember the name of the place we went to, but it was a REALLY expensive, really fancy restaurant. There were only three things on the menu. Knowing how expensive the food was, Rachel Barnett and I decided to split. It's a three-course meal, so the salad comes out first. I was STARVING because I had eaten NOTHING since I had my half a sandwich at lunch, so I eat the entire salad. I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't have, if dinner was good and I wasn't able to eat it all I would be sad...then dinner actually came out. The portions were TINY! Okay not tiny, but really small! I was SO glad that I had eaten the entire salad, especially since Rachel and I were splitting. We had chosen the blackened fish, asparagus, and mashed potatoes dish. It was REALLY good and I was disappointed the portions were small. After that we got ice cream. It wasn't a whole lot of food, but it was definitely enough to satisfy. Several of us were really tired and had to get up early the next morning in order to prepare for fine arts, so we got up to go not long after everyone finished. Some of us ended up waiting in the lobby for the others. While we were waiting, I looked inside a doorway to another room in the restaurant-the bar. PEOPLE WERE SWING DANCING IN THERE!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness I was SO disappointed, I wanted to go in there and start dancing!!!! I love dancing!!!!! But I had to settle for swaying in time to the music outside the door. We walked back to the hotel. When we get back to our room, I notice that my bag (which has my money, cell phone, and Bible inside of it) was NOT on my bed like I was expecting. I had asked one of my friends to bring it down with her to citation ceremony and give it to me aftewards, but when I asked her for it, she said she didn't have it. I assumed that she had left it in our room. But that ended up not being the case. Rachel reminded her that indeed, she HAD taken the bag down to citation ceremony. Unfortunately, she had no clue what had happened to it after that. I was getting ready for bed when Daniel Clark knocked on our door and asked if we wanted to watch the Summit DVD from last year. I said sure, so Rachel and I went down to Daniel's room to see whether or not it was suitable for girls to come in lol. On our way back to our room Rachel starts running real fast, and I start running after her...I yell "Rachel why are we running?" Brian was sitting in the hallway, heard us coming, and stuck his foot out in the middle of the hallway. Rachel ran around it, but I jumped over it instead of running around it. Big mistake. I lost my balance landing on the other side, slipped, fell, and skinned my left knee really bad. OH MY GOODNESS IT HURT SOOOOOO MUCH!!!! It didn't look like it was bleeding, so I just decided to wait until after we watched the DVD to deal with it. Altobelli, seeing that several of us are gathered in the one room, decides to call a team meeting in that room. During the meeting, Altobelli brought up the problem of disunity on our team. Part of me was going "And you just now noticed this?" but I was SO glad the issue was finally being brought up! Jonathan started talking about how we didn't really have a set schedule so people went off to do their own thing...and the discussion started to get off track. That problem was a symptom, not the root issue. Finally someone brought it back to the root issue: disrespect. We discussed the proper way to handle problems with team members based on Matthew 18. Someone said something about "Well, we're not going to suddenly become a unified team in the course of two days" to which Daniel replied "Never underestimate God" and told about his freshman year in Ft. Worth. We prayed, and all went back to our rooms to get some sleep. During this entire meeting my knee was THROBBING in major pain. The pain made it a little difficult to get to sleep that night.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Quick Explanation of Color Schemes
This is really, really random, and in all honesty probably nobody cares, but if you've been following my blog over the past several months you've probably noticed several changes in layout and color scheme. It seems random but each color scheme actually has a purpose behind it. I decided when I made this blog that I wanted to have a color scheme having to do with Summit.
The first color scheme was red/black/white, with black being the dominant color. This trio of colors has been our church's official Summit color scheme ever since my freshman year. I started out with black as the dominant color, but then my blog looked almost exactly like Marcelo's blog. So I changed it to red as the dominant color. After that I changed it to white as the dominant color.
Then we decided that we weren't going with that color scheme this year. When we got our new Summit pants they were gray, blue, and black. So my blog got changed to that color scheme.
The current color scheme seems very girly, and it is. It's basically going off of the color of my citation dress.
Anyways, there's a random explanation you probably didn't care to know.
The first color scheme was red/black/white, with black being the dominant color. This trio of colors has been our church's official Summit color scheme ever since my freshman year. I started out with black as the dominant color, but then my blog looked almost exactly like Marcelo's blog. So I changed it to red as the dominant color. After that I changed it to white as the dominant color.
Then we decided that we weren't going with that color scheme this year. When we got our new Summit pants they were gray, blue, and black. So my blog got changed to that color scheme.
The current color scheme seems very girly, and it is. It's basically going off of the color of my citation dress.
Anyways, there's a random explanation you probably didn't care to know.
Monday, May 5, 2008
SUMMIT-Friday-Citation ceremony
So after taking team pictures I went up to my room to get ready for citation ceremony. Ironed my dress, took a quick shower, did makeup...didn't get to finish my hair before I had to run down to the ballroom. After getting quickly briefed on how the ceremony was going to go, we found our seats and waited for the ceremony to start. I sat next to a girl named Mary who was in the participation and gold rounds with us. We got to talk quite a bit, which was very fun! So the ceremony begins. I finally figured out who NewEnglandIte08 from the Awana forums is! Citation was, for the most part, uneventful. The fine arts performances were really good, especially the piano performance. As a side note, I found out that Matthew Swift is also going to Baylor! How cool is that? Anyways, we had eight people from Grace getting their citations, five boys (Matthew Boyd, Andrew Garia, Marcelo Gonzalez, Ben Kenagy, and Jonathan Snodgrass) and three girls (myself, Arielle Timmons, and Adriane Wass). I felt kind of bad for Andy-the announcer mispronounced his last name. It's supposed to rhyme with "area", but instead he pronounced it as if it was "Garcia" missing the c.
But my walk across the stage was very special. I had actually decided months beforehand that just shaking Art Rorheim's hand wasn't going to be enough. So when they called my name, I walked across the stage, took Art's hand, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek! Art exclaimed "Oh!" it was so sweet! Then I went over to Jack Edgar and did the same thing. The photographer took the picture, and I accidentally ended up over-staying my time on stage because I, being the absent-minded person I am, hand never bother to notice that everyone was exiting the stage by walking in front of Jack, so I try to take a step back and go behind him like the seniors last year did...of course, that's not what they want, so Jack keeps pressing his hand on my back to try to get me to move forward. I think I ended up staying on stage an extra five seconds or so before I actually figured out what he wanted me to do. Yeah, advice for everyone in the future: make sure you know how you're supposed to get on and off the stage!
Shaking the missionary's hands was incredibly fun. Apparently a lot of the missionaries remembered my team from quiz because that was the subject the missionaries brought up the most frequently in conversation. I also got asked where I was from a lot, as well as what my plans for next year are. And almost all the missionaries commented on my dress.
After the ceremony is over, Marissa takes me over to meet SparksDirectorFlorida!!! I was SOOOOOOOOO excited to finally get to meet her! I also got to talk with my mom briefly. It was pretty hilarious, she said "You were the only one who kissed Art Rorheim instead of shaking his hand"-with absolutely no facial expressions, vocal inflections, or anything that would give me a clue as to whether this was a good or bad thing. I thought she was angry for a minute, so I responded "Mhmm, and...?" To which my mom smiled and said "It was so sweet!" :D
The we went off to dinner...
But my walk across the stage was very special. I had actually decided months beforehand that just shaking Art Rorheim's hand wasn't going to be enough. So when they called my name, I walked across the stage, took Art's hand, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek! Art exclaimed "Oh!" it was so sweet! Then I went over to Jack Edgar and did the same thing. The photographer took the picture, and I accidentally ended up over-staying my time on stage because I, being the absent-minded person I am, hand never bother to notice that everyone was exiting the stage by walking in front of Jack, so I try to take a step back and go behind him like the seniors last year did...of course, that's not what they want, so Jack keeps pressing his hand on my back to try to get me to move forward. I think I ended up staying on stage an extra five seconds or so before I actually figured out what he wanted me to do. Yeah, advice for everyone in the future: make sure you know how you're supposed to get on and off the stage!
Shaking the missionary's hands was incredibly fun. Apparently a lot of the missionaries remembered my team from quiz because that was the subject the missionaries brought up the most frequently in conversation. I also got asked where I was from a lot, as well as what my plans for next year are. And almost all the missionaries commented on my dress.
After the ceremony is over, Marissa takes me over to meet SparksDirectorFlorida!!! I was SOOOOOOOOO excited to finally get to meet her! I also got to talk with my mom briefly. It was pretty hilarious, she said "You were the only one who kissed Art Rorheim instead of shaking his hand"-with absolutely no facial expressions, vocal inflections, or anything that would give me a clue as to whether this was a good or bad thing. I thought she was angry for a minute, so I responded "Mhmm, and...?" To which my mom smiled and said "It was so sweet!" :D
The we went off to dinner...
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